(Dec 17, 2003)
From May 1938, the first (and only) issue of CAPT. HAZZARD, this is pretty good pulp adventure. Captain Hazzard was (let`s be honest) designed to come as close to being a new Doc Savage as possible without inviting a letter from Street & Smith`s lawyers. On the cover, Cap is portrayed in riding boots, jodhpurs and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He even has that goofy little quiff of hair that Doc sported on the pulp covers. Climbing down a vine covered wall, firing a gun with one hand while an exceptionally cute damsel hangs on him, Hazzard seems unaware that some suspicious character wearing a python head for a hood is creeping up on him from the side. Yep, if you were impatiently waiting for the new issue of DOC SAVAGE and saw this on the stands, you might plunk your dime down for it instead.
Hazzard is a studly young man already famous the world over as an adventurer and scientist. He lives at Hazzard Laboratories, a complex of buildings on Long Island where his team of researchers is busily developing amazing inventions (at one point, his plane kicks in with its own rocket engine, quite a coup for 1938). Although he carries a big ol` Colt automatic and has no hesitation about using it, Hazzard also wears a utility belt which has pouches jammed with useful items like smoke bombs, hacksaw blades, Junior Scientist chemistry kits, infra-red goggles and tiny grenades.
And yet, Cap is most interesting because of the ways he differs from Doc and goes off in his own direction. I really wish this magazine had run for a few issues to see how Hazzard might have developed.
Most strikingly, Captain Hazzard is telepathic. Blind for most of his life (until an operation restored his sight), he studied a wide range of esoteric arts including Yoga and hypnotism. Hazzard (evidently not his real name; certainly no first name is mentioned even in passing) developed his psychic perception and picked men with telepathic potential to be on his team As a result, they can contact him mentally over long distances, he can visualize what they`re looking at and send them instructions. Apparently his men can`t communicate with each other telepathically, only through Hazzard himself.
This whole business gives Cap a mystique that might have been played up more if the series had continued. He can sense the presence of imminent danger and of hostile minds (even that of a snake), for one thing. Captain Hazzard is reasonably fit and tough as an adventurer should be, but he`s certainly not an overwhelming superman as Doc Savage was. The compensating psychic powers would have given Hazzard and his stories their own unique slant.
Cap is also a bit more vulnerable than the stoic enigmatic man of bronze, worrying about the danger he puts his friends in. ("Anger, disappointment, despair beat in his brain.")
Written by Paul Chadwick under the "Chester Hawks" byline, PYTHON MEN OF LOST CITY has a few things working against it. The writing style is serviceable but uninspired; it certainly doesn`t have the manic flair that Lester Dent or Norvell Page howed. And the story is much too short to really develop all the ingredients. Cap is up against the Phoenix, a mysterious gnomelike mastermind. There`s a NYC gang using a strange lethal force field gadget that seems to be intruding from a different story as most of this tale involves different Indian tribes, including the very cool Python Men (they wear the skin and head of giant pythons as hoods, not comfortable in the heat but impressive as hell).
Hazzard and his crew escort a luscious young lady to the Guatemalan jungle in search of her missing father. (Just once, I`d like to see an elderly scientist or explorer who has a homely daughter, just to see if the hero would still take the case.)There then ensue all sorts of chases and aerial dogfights, attacks by red army ants and white pythons, slaves laboring inside an active volcano at some sinister task, and the world-conquering schemes of the shrivelled Phoenix himself ("The head was shrunken, matted with long stringy hair like a mummy... The skin was cracked by the fumes of the mountain into hideous reptilian scales." He doesn`t make a good first impression.) All of that in just over fifty pages, including the origin and backstory of Hazzard.
Whew. The story needs more room to expand on some of these elements. For one thing, no space is given to wondering who the Phoenix really is, and the revelation of his identity has no impact. Also, as it stands, Cap`s team of eccentric experts remain just names and brief descriptions. (It doesn`t help that one member of the crew keeps changing his name back and forth from Tracey to Lacey every other page; was the editor paying attention at all?)
Giving the aides another chapter or two to show some personality and ability would make them come to life a bit more. Even as it is, I like Jake Cole, the taciturn not terribly bright cowboy who can still be counted on when the shooting starts. He has about as much sensitivity to psychic phenomena as a sandbag does, and his skepticism as the telepathic messages flash back and forth could be amusing.
A second story of Captain Hazzard was written before the magazine got canned, and it eventually saw print in a much revised form as an issue of SECRET AGENT X (a character for which Paul Chadwick also contributed some exploits under the Brant House byline). It`s too bad Cap didn`t get a better shot at fame. No radio series, no Saturday morning cliffhanger, not even a five page strip in the back of a comic. He`s like a singer that had one great Number One hit and was never heard from again.